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Department of Physics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India; 2Department of Chemistry, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.
Email: Shahidkhan_m@yahoo.com
Received January 24th, 2011; revised February 10th, 2011; accepted March 15th, 2011.
ABSTRACT
Highly oriented and transparent ZnO thin films have been fabricated on ultrasonically cleaned quartz substrates by the
sol-gel technique. X-ray diffraction, UV-VIS, FTIR, photoluminescence and SEM are used to characterize ZnO thin
films. X-ray diffraction study show that all the films prepared in this work have hexagonal wurtzite structure, with lattice constants a = b = 3.260 , c = 5.214 . The optical band gap energy of the thin films is found to be direct allowed
transition ~3.24 eV. The FTIR spectrum of the film has the characteristics ZnO absorption band at 482 cm1. The photoluminescence spectrum of the samples has an UV emission peak centred at 383 nm with broad band visible emission
centred in the range of 500 - 600 nm.
Keywords: ZnO, XRD, SEM, Photoluminescence, Band Gap
1. Introduction
Significant research efforts have been made in recent
years for developing highly oriented and transparent ZnO
thin films, because of their potential application in transparent electrode in display, window layers in solar cells,
field emitters, ultraviolet laser emission, photodetectors,
piezoelectricity, bio-sensors, short wavelength light emitting diode and information technology [1-8]. A II-VI
group semiconductor material ZnO has wide band gap
(~3.3 eV at room temperature) and large excitonic binding energy ~60 meV. Due to their unique optical, electrical and semiconducting properties, ZnO thin films are
extensively used in various applications. Despite several
approaches adopted for making these ZnO thin films;
controlling the size, shape, crystallinity and various parameters affecting the size and shape of these materials
still need to be investigated. Therefore, it is essential to
investigate optimum conditions for fabrication of highly
oriented and transparent ZnO thin films. The main concern of researcher is to get better quality of material
stoichiometry. ZnO thin films are grown by different
techniques such as pulsed laser deposition (PLD),
magnetron sputtering, MOCVD, spray pyrolysis etc
[9-12]. Sol-gel technique is widely adopted due to its
comparatively simple procedure as there is no need of
costly vacuum system and it has a wide-range advantage
Copyright 2011 SciRes.
2. Experimental Details
All the reagents used in the present work for the chemical synthesis were of analytical grade. Zinc acetate dihydrate (Zn(CH3COO)22H2O) was first dissolved in a
2-methoxyethanol ((CH3)2CHOH) with monoethanolamine (MEA: H2NCH2CH2OH) which was used as a stabiliser. The molar ratio of MEA to zinc acetate was kept
to 1.0 and concentration of zinc acetate was 0.80 mol/l.
The resultant solution was stirred at 60C for 1 h to yield
a clear and homogeneous solution ready for coating. The
coating was performed with freshly prepared solution.
The films on ultrasonically cleaned quartz substrates
were prepared using spin-coating unit which was rotated
at 3000 rpm for 30 s. The films were preheated (baked)
MSA
Optical and Structural Properties of ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Sol-Gel Method
k
2 cos
(1)
where k is a constant taken to be 0.94, is the wavelength of X-Ray used ( = 1.54 ) and 2 is the full
width at half maximum of (002) peak of XRD pattern,
Bragg angle, 2, is around 34.44. The average value of
grain size is found to be 20 nm.
The dislocation density (), defined as the length of
dislocation lines per unit volume, are estimated using the
equation:
1
D2
(2)
cos
(3)
341
hv A hv Eg
12
(4)
Optical and Structural Properties of ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Sol-Gel Method
342
( 1014) (lines/m2)
( 103)
(100)
2.8095
8.37
18
30.86
2.01
(002)
2.6016
6.28
24
17.36
1.49
(101)
2.4764
8.37
18
30.86
1.98
c ()
Calculated
Standard
Calculated
Standard
3.260
3.253
5.214
5.215
Figure 3. The plots (h)2 vs. photon energy of the ZnO thin
film.
Optical and Structural Properties of ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Sol-Gel Method
343
4. Conclusions
We have grown ZnO thin films on quartz substrates by
sol-gel technique with 0.80 M zinc acetate solutions.
Films have been characterized using optical and structural measurements. All the films exhibit high transmittance (91% - 95%) in the range of 400 nm to 800 nm,
thus making the films suitable for optoelectronic devices,
for instance as window layers in solar cells. The films
show a direct transition in the range 3.24 eV. The X-ray
diffraction analysis revealed that all samples have hexagonal wurtzite structure. The crystallites sizes as measured using XRD data are found to be in the range of 18 24 nm. The film has the strong emission band at 383 nm
and also a broad emission peak centred at 550 nm visible
region.
Intensities
Assignments
482
Medium
ZnO stretching
3800, 3900
Doublet
HOH stretching
1550, 1665
Doublet
C=O
2380
Strong
O=C=O
344
Optical and Structural Properties of ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Sol-Gel Method
5. Acknowledgements
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
P. Pushpharajah, S. Radhakrishna and A. K. Arof, Transparent Conducting Lithium-Doped Nickel Oxide Thin
Films by Spray Pyrolysis Technique, Journal of Materials Science, Vol. 32, No. 11, June 1997, pp. 3001-3006.
doi:10.1023/A:1018657424566
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Optical and Structural Properties of ZnO Thin Films Fabricated by Sol-Gel Method
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